Generally, in the field of wireless communication it is known that the cellular network operators in order to secure stability of the cellular network and to keep maintenance costs low take measures to influence the behavior of wireless communication devices operating within the cellular networks. This in particular applies to wireless communication devices which are situated in the machine-to-machine domain.
One example for such influencing measures is documented in the GSMA network efficiency guide (GSMA Association, Official Document CLP.03: IoT Device Connection Efficiency Guidelines V1.0, Oct. 13, 2014), which is incorporated herein by reference.
For machine-to-machine wireless communication devices—preferably composed of a controlling appliance and a communication unit, in particular a wireless module—those measures make additional efforts necessary in order to cope with the communication behavior demands provided by the cellular network operators. This creates additional interaction efforts between the controlling appliance and the communication unit.
In present solutions the communication unit is completely controlled by the controlling appliance, while the communication units firmware directly carries out commands received via the remote control linked to the command interface with the controlling appliance. Hence the additional efforts would necessarily be put on the controlling appliance for assuring a behavior of the wireless communication device complying with the provided communication behavior demands of the cellular network.
This approach to cope with the communication behavior demands is disadvantageous as the controlling appliances are generally devices created for a special purpose according to the vertical market of the device manufacturer. Such a vertical market may be a point-of-sale, asset-tracking or an entertainment and security unit in a car. Typically such devices just request from the communication unit connectivity and aim to do nothing more than setup a connection, send or receive data and close the connection. It would be a tremendous overload to additionally handle the communication behavior demands in the controlling appliance.
On the other hand the controlling appliance still has its own demands and thus a need to control the communication link with respect to specific requirements in terms of QoS, power consumption, data throughput etc.
It is therefore the goal of present invention to overcome the mentioned disadvantages and to propose a solution for an improved control of the wireless communication device in order to comply with communication behavior demands from the cellular network the wireless communication device is currently operating with.
Further alternative and advantageous solutions would, accordingly, be desirable in the art.